Final Failure in Afghanistan Is Biden’s to Own

Leaving aside the debate about what led to this, the following days are critical. To avoid a bloodbath, the evacuation must proceed quickly and efficiently and it should contain as many Afghan helpers as possible.

To do that, the admin must bribe/cajole/threaten the Taliban to wait and let the evacuation proceed. But even if that works, there's a local ISIS branch which has every motivation to make things as bad as possible. American forces have placed themselves in a very vulnerable position yet they must handle this last challenge.

Pull the other one, this is a triumph for the Biden administration. Every president since Bush has been trying to end one of the stupid forever wars.

Insofar as there is a failure here, it is completely owned by Bush (worst president in modern history?). There was never an actual reason to invade Afghanistan. It turned out that the way to kill Osama was a fairly surgical strike in Pakistan, no invasion needed.

Not sure which hat David Sanger was wearing as he wrote this pompous missive -- reporter, editorialist, or pundit? Mostly pundit, I think.